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enough to be significant, but look at these." His nervous forefinger followed
the line on the drum. "Three other peaks almost as high, made earlier. Three
and a half hours ago, seven, and ten and a half. That interval happens to be
the length of a watch in the Triplanet fleets. They may be testing something,
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using the supernova spray for a screen."
"Maybe," Armstrong said. "But we've picked up stronger bursts that you said
were natural peaks in the supernova spray."
That was true, Forester knew, and part of the reason for his ulcers. He felt
incompetent to bear his heavy responsibilities here, because all his training
had been for the cautiously tentative weighing and balancing of pure research,
not for any decisive action.
"We can't be sure," he agreed uncomfortably. "That regularity may be just
coincidence, but it's too alarming to be ignored." He dictated a brief
bulletin for Armstrong to encode and put on the teleprinter for the Defense
Authority. "I'm going down to work in the lower project," he added. "Call me
if anything breaks."
He hurried back to his own silent office, and through it into the
innocent-seeming cloakroom beyond. Locking the door behind him, he lifted a
mirror to punch a hidden button. The cloakroom dropped, a disguised elevator.
For Project Lookout, however vital the watch it kept, was also a blind for
something more important. The Geiger counters in the new military satellite
stations above the atmosphere kept a wider watch against enemy weapons; the
graver function of the search installation was to hide the deeper secret of
Project Thunderbolt.
Project Thunderbolt had sprung from the supernova's explosion. It was the
chief cause of Forester's breaking health, and the reason he had no time to go
with Ruth to Dr. Pitcher. It was a weapon - of the last, most desperate
resort. Only eight other men shared with him the killing burden of its secret.
Six were the youthful technicians, Armstrong and Dodge and the rest,
physically hard and mentally keen, picked and trained for their appalling
duty. The other two were the defense minister and the world president.
And Frank Ironsmith?
Forester frowned, going down in the elevator, puzzled and disturbed when he
thought of Ironsmith's call about that urchin at the gate. Because Ironsmith's
job was in the computing section, he had no legitimate knowledge of the
project, and its security was no concern of his.
If that indolent clerk had ever drawn any unwise conclusions from the problems
brought for him to solve, however, he had kept them to himself. Exploring his
past, in their routine loyalty check, the Security Police had found no cause
for suspicion, and Forester could see no reason to mistrust him now.
The secret of the lower project had been efficiently kept, he assured himself.
That hidden elevator dropped him a hundred feet, to a concrete vault in the
heart of the mountain. All the blasting and construction had been done by his
own technicians, and all supplies were delivered to the less important project
above, which was supported by unaudited grants of discretionary emergency
funds. Not even Ironsmith could know anything about it.
Yet something tightened Forester's stomach muscles with a faint apprehension,
now, as he hurried out of the elevator and along the narrow tunnel to the
vault. Snapping on the lights, he peered alertly about the launching station
for anything wrong.
The launching tube ran up through the search building, disguised as a
ventilator shaft, the gleaming breech mechanism open now and ready. His
searching eyes moved to the missiles racked beneath it. They were just as he
had left them, and a sense of their supreme deadliness lessened his unease.
Turning to the machine shop beside the station, he paused before the newly
assembled weapon on a bench there, whose final delicate adjustments had kept
him so late last night. Although Armstrong and the others were trained to
launch these most terrible machines and the big sealed safe behind him held
all the specifications - if some Triplanet assassin should succeed - he had
dared trust no other with all the details of war head, drive, and pilot.
Stroking the cold sleekness of the dural case, he couldn't help feeling a
creative pride in this thing he had made. Slim and tapered and beautiful with
precision machining, it was smaller than any of the old atomic weapons, but
heavy with an entirely different order of destruction. Its warhead, smaller
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